Marketing Leaders: What are the biggest challenges facing B2B marketing?

In the first of a five-part roundtable series, SBC Media asks some of the leading voices from across the iGaming industry about the trends, challenges, tips and tricks that are shaping the marketing landscape in 2026 and beyond. For part one, we spoke to Martin Hodges (Co-Founder and CMO, BetComply), Robin Becker (Director of B2B Marketing, Hub88), Michael Baker-Mosley (Founder, Triumph B2B), Seda Baburyan (Marketing and Partnership Manager, PartnerMatrix) and Pierre Pulis (Marketing Director, BETBY), on the marketing challenges operators today. These challenges span brand exposure, market saturation, differentiation and the growing influence of artificial intelligence. If one thing is for certain: marketers need to know how to adapt. Read our full roundtable below… Looking at the B2B iGaming marketing landscape in 2026, what are some of the biggest challenges that brands face when it comes to marketing themselves? How do you envisage those challenges evolving going into 2027? Martin Hodges: I think one of the biggest challenges is that everyone is fighting for the same attention. There are more suppliers than ever, more content than ever, and everyone’s claiming to be different. After a while, it all starts to blur together. For me, the brands that stand out are the ones with real people behind them. iGaming has always been a relationship-driven industry. People don’t just buy products, they buy into the people they trust. That’s why voices like Alex Tomic, Simon Westbury and even our own Mike de Graaff have become so well known. They share what they know, they have opinions (whether you agree or disagree with them) and they’re visible. That builds trust in both them and the businesses they represent. I think that’s where marketing is heading. Less polished corporate messaging. More personality. More people simply sharing what they know and what they’ve experienced, rather than what the marketing team thinks people want to hear. Looking ahead to 2027, trust will become one of the biggest competitive advantages a brand can have. The companies that invest in knowledgeable people, give them a voice and let them represent the business will have a real edge over those that continue to hide behind logos and generic marketing messages. Robin Becker: One of the biggest challenges on the B2B side is simply the sheer number of new companies entering the market, particularly among suppliers and aggregators. When I joined Hub88 four and a half years ago, there were only a handful of aggregation platforms; but today, it feels as though there is a new brand popping up every week! The same applies to game providers, with new studios entering the market almost daily, it can sometimes be hard to keep up. So with that increased competition, the challenge is no longer just building a good product – it’s finding a way to stand out in an increasingly crowded market. In aggregation, that’s particularly difficult because, at a high level, we’re all offering similar services. We provide content to operators and help them integrate it more efficiently. If we can’t differentiate what we’re offering, then the question then becomes: what makes your business different? For us, the answer has been to focus on saving our clients time. We have invested heavily in tools that simplify long integrations and streamline day-to-day tasks such as reporting, promotions and communication between suppliers and operators. Rather than competing solely on content, we’re trying to make our clients’ lives easier. That’s how we differentiate ourselves. Another important consideration is deciding exactly what type of business you want to be. Are you targeting regulated markets or grey markets? Are you targeting start ups or tier one operators? Who do you want to work with, and more importantly, who would want to work with you? Once you work out that company identity, you need to commit to it. Too many new suppliers launch with the mindset that having good games is enough. But that’s no longer sufficient if you want to stand out; the reality is that operators are no longer looking for just any content. They’re looking for content that performs specifically for their business and helps them reach their commercial goals. If you’re launching alongside hundreds of other studios, you need a clear strategy for why operators should choose you over everyone else. And that’s much easier said than done! I also think some companies underestimate the importance of preparing properly before launch. We regularly onboard new suppliers to our aggregation platform, but we’re selective about who we work with. They need to demonstrate demand from operators and have an established portfolio. Even then, we’re often surprised by how little planning has gone into some launches. Throughout my time in the industry, I’ve come across suppliers that don’t even have websites or even basic marketing assets such as logos. That raises an obvious question: how are you launching a business without the fundamentals in place? Too many companies focus solely on getting their product live without considering how they’ll present themselves to the market. As a result, the industry risks releasing products before they’re truly ready. Branding also has to be part of the launch strategy from day one. When I joined Hub88, very few people knew who we were. The platform had been developed internally to solve a technical challenge, but it wasn’t really a brand …yet. But that gave us the perfect opportunity to build one from scratch and really shape Hub88 into something that we truly believe has helped fill a gap on the market. In many ways, that’s easier than trying to reposition an established business because you aren’t fighting against legacy perceptions. We were able to decide who we wanted to be, how we wanted to communicate and how we wanted people to perceive us. That’s something every new company should think about before launching. Don’t just release a product because it’s technically ready. Take the time to define your identity, your positioning and how you want customers to remember you. The product and the brand need to launch together. Seda Baburyan: 2026 was the industry diving in headfirst, and it wasn’t really a product story. It was a language story. AI became a word showing up everywhere because leaving it off felt like admitting one was behind. That’s the tension marketing sat with all year: AI as capability and AI as claim are two different things, and the industry let them blur. Some brands earned the label, building products where AI was genuinely load-bearing. Others just borrowed it. From the outside, the two looked identical, which is the risk. A label indistinguishable from its imitation stops being a differentiator and becomes a liability waiting to be noticed. The golden middle isn’t a product decision, it’s a marketing discipline: stating the true strength of the product. Brands that used AI quietly and only spoke about it where it changed a real outcome are the ones whose claims land hardest now, because they didn’t spend the word sparingly, they earned the right to spend it. Into 2027, I expect the market to recalibrate for proof over presence. The brands that spent the label carefully will still have credibility to draw on. The ones that spent it fast will find tomorrow arrived sooner than priced in. Michael Baker-Mosley: B2B iGaming is operating in a really challenging environment. Licensed operators are under pressure from regulation, taxation and rising costs, while unlicensed operators are being pushed to move into the licensed sector. But on the whole, there are challenges facing the iGaming industry as a whole. Whether it’s competing for effective affiliates, rising streaming costs or simply protecting margins, the financial pressure continues to impact the bottom line. Often, we think many of these challenges are limited to the B2C industry, but they also carry through to the supplier side. As more suppliers continue to flood into the market, marketers face an uphill battle. You have to be able to effectively demonstrate your brand’s value and ensure that you, as a supplier, are seen as a trusted partner that can genuinely deliver a product that meets the needs of operators. The emphasis on added value has never been more important. For marketers, that means stepping up our game. Ultimately, it boils down to answering one simple question: why should a customer choose us over everyone else? That doesn’t just mean finding more places to plaster your logo or more journalists to distribute your PR to. We have to tell better stories, cut through the noise and clearly communicate what makes our business different. More importantly, marketing has to own that narrative. If marketing doesn’t own why the business deserves to exist in the marketplace, it’s difficult to expect anyone else to. I think those challenges only become more pronounced going into 2027. At the same time, marketers also have to embrace artificial intelligence, but with caution. Used well, AI can improve productivity, generate better insights, increase output and help inform overall marketing strategy. However, it’s incredibly important that marketers don’t see AI as a fix-all. AI can produce content, but it can’t own your customer understanding or define your market position. The marketers who succeed will be the ones who combine better storytelling with smarter use of AI while continuing to own the strategic thinking behind their brands. The reality is that many suppliers are also feeling margin pressure, so they’ll probably have to achieve all of this with leaner budgets. Marketers across the iGaming industry must now actively demonstrate tangible ROI on campaign activity; it’s no longer sufficient to say, “We had our logo displayed on X number of websites.” You need to show how that activity benefits the wider business. In other words, B2B marketing has to prove commercial value, not just marketing value, and it has to own the intelligence that supports those commercial decisions. Dorota Gruszka: From a slot provider perspective, I think one of the biggest challenges in 2026 is simply standing out. There are more studios, more games and more content competing for the same operator attention, so having a good product is no longer enough. Most suppliers are fighting for visibility with the same decision-makers, at the same industry events and through very similar channels. The challenge for marketing is therefore to build a recognisable identity and give operators a clear reason to care about your games rather than just adding another title to an already huge lobby. Another challenge is proving commercial value rather than just generating awareness. Operators are increasingly focused on performance, retention and efficiency, so B2B marketing needs to work much more closely with sales, account management and product teams. Instead of simply saying that a new slot has great mechanics or visuals, providers need to demonstrate how their content performs, where it performs and which player segments or markets it is relevant for. Regulation and localisation also make this more complicated. Requirements continue to differ significantly between jurisdictions, while operators want content and campaigns that feel relevant to individual markets. Regulatory developments in 2026 are continuing around licensing, advertising, player protection, AML and supplier responsibilities, and that fragmentation creates additional complexity for both product and marketing teams. Going into 2027, I expect these challenges to become even more pronounced. AI will make content creation faster and cheaper, but it will also make the market noisier. If every supplier can produce polished campaigns, social content and PR at scale, simply producing more content won’t necessarily create more attention. The value will shift towards having a distinctive brand voice, strong creative ideas, credible data and genuine relationships within the industry. AI adoption is already accelerating across gaming, although the industry’s overall maturity in using it effectively is still developing. I also think B2B marketing will become increasingly data-driven and personalised. Rather than marketing every release equally to everyone, providers will need to understand which games, mechanics and themes are relevant to specific operators, markets and player audiences. The biggest challenge in 2027 may not be reaching people; it will be earning their attention and proving relevance in an industry where everyone is competing for the same few minutes of it. Pierre Pulis:This is not specific to 2026, this is a challenge that has impacted the iGaming industry for quite some time. And that’s standing out in what is now a very, very crowded market. Everyone is saying that they are the best at what they do. But at the end of the day, no one is really demonstrating their proper value. What are the values of the brand? What is the value of the product? Being able to demonstrate this is absolutely crucial when we’re looking at B2B, especially when you’re trying to communicate your products to your audience. You really need to be able to zoom in on the USPs, educate them on what value you are bringing to the market and why they should be working with you. So when it comes to selecting your USPs, you do that in a very simple way. In the iGaming industry, the marketing team is often seen as an ancillary service where you might be notified about a partnership, product or feature roll out and are expected to communicate that to the audience. But that’s not how you do B2B marketing. You need to work closely with the different teams at your company – sales, product, development, etc – and fully understand what’s in the pipeline, where the product roadmap is heading and, most importantly, understand the industry that you’re working in. That way, you can gauge a deeper knowledge of the gaps in the industry where your company can help resolve headaches for your industry. Another thing that is prevalent in the industry is Above The Line (ATL) style marketing. This is the biggest challenge. Everyone is now competing for space – whether it’s banners on the digital side, or expo booths at events – with strategies relying primarily on the budget at disposal. And ATL-style marketing certainly has its value — but we also need the creativity to move beyond broad-reach media and develop stronger BTL and TTL activations that engage audiences more meaningfully across the funnel. That’s where we can unlock greater efficiency and ultimately a better return on our marketing investment. Marketers should be looking at how they can take that creativity and use it to communicate the values of the company and the values of the product. That’ll ultimately translate into the marketing funnel. In many cases, we’re just seeing the top part of the funnel, which is brand awareness, but you need to educate your audience beyond that initial brand awareness phase stemming from ATL-style marketing. John Cook: I think one of the biggest mistakes we make when discussing B2B marketing challenges is assuming that the problem is visibility. There are more channels than ever to reach customers, more events to attend and more technology to help us create content at scale. Getting your brand in front of someone isn’t necessarily the difficult part anymore – it’s giving them a reason to care. That distinction is only going to become more important as we move into 2027. AI will inevitably increase the amount of content being produced, while more suppliers entering the market means that the same decision-makers are being approached by an ever-growing number of businesses. If everyone responds by simply increasing their marketing output, we create more noise without necessarily creating more value. For me, marketers need to become much more disciplined about understanding the problems their customers are actually trying to solve. We can talk about being innovative, customer-centric or having the latest technology, but what does any of that mean to an operator facing margin pressure, regulatory complexity or increasingly demanding players? That is where research, data and genuine customer understanding become incredibly important. Marketing should, and must, be able to identify where the commercial pressures are, understand how products address these pressures and communicate that value in language which resonates with the people making purchasing decisions. Going into 2027, I don’t think the winning brands will necessarily be those that market themselves the most heavily. They’ll be the ones that understand their audience best. In an increasingly saturated industry, attention might get you into the room, but relevance is what gives you a reason to stay there.